Wednesday, September 09, 2015

If you want to really lose weight, stop dieting and eat! Seriously, I'm not joking around here. Counting calories makes us obsessed with what we eat; we’re always looking at the calorie count of different foods or buying low-cal this and low-carb that. Those foods are no good for dieters; they are a scam and full of chemicals that make you gain weight! All you really have to do to lose weight is make a commitment to being a healthier person. That’s the first step.

Is Eating Salads the Best Way to Lose Weight?

Eating salads is not the best thing for your health, and especially if you are trying to lose weight. People have these mistaken claims that if they want to lose weight, eat salads all day. Well, we can’t live on salad, especially what most people think is a salad is actually quite void of nutrition.Iceberg lettuce has only minimal nutrition and Romaine lettuce very little nutrition. The rule for lettuce is, the lighter the green color, the less nutrition the lettuce has. You want to go for the dark leafy greens.

Let’s go out to dinner: So we think, “I’m overweight, I’ll just have a chicken salad for dinner”. The iceberg lettuce salad is topped with imitation bacon bits (ouch!) really bad for your health; white bread croutons (another ouch!) just a bunch of carbohydrates that turn into sugar; and the lettuce is the pale green variety so it has very little vitamins. And all those fancy dressings, with the exception of pure extra virgin olive oil and apple cider vinegar, are full of chemicals, sugar and imitation colors, that actually help you to gain weight. This is why you crave more food.

The sad part is, you’re done with your salad but you didn’t get full. The only nutrition you’re getting out of the salad is from the few bits of chicken in the salad. You go home feeling hungry and deprived. That’s not good for our emotional well-being to feel hungry and deprived of food.

If you want want to lose weight the right way, meaning keeping the weight off, eat to satisfaction or don’t leave the table. The best way to lose weight without leaving the table feeling hungry (that’s the clincher to truly losing weight) is to incorporate healthy foods into your diet and that would be whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, lots of fruits and vegetables and healthy raw plant based oils and eat these things to your hearts content. A little turkey, chicken and fish is OK too.

Whole grains we can overeat on and not gain weight

Brown rice

Millet

Barley

Rolled Oats

Quinoa

Whole Wheat

Spelt

Bulgar

and others

All variety of nuts and seeds are needed in a healthy diet as well as all variety of beans and lentils. Incorporate all the different varieties into your eating regimen and eat and be healthy!

Good Fats Our Body Craves

Our body needs oil and the best oil comes from plants and is raw like extra virgin coconut oil and extra virgin olive oil, and of course natural oils you get from nuts and seeds and other oily based plant food like avocados. A little raw goats milk butter and cream, not cooked is okay too, but the minute the butter is processed like what you buy in the store, it takes away the goodness. We’re NOT Saying Never Eat Salads

baby organic kale from our garden

Of course, salads are a great accompaniment to any meal, but if you want the salad to be the meal then you need to make it the meal, whether it is vegetarian salad or a meat salad.

This is an accompaniment salad, not a main meal salad

Eating salads in restaurants is a hit or miss and they usually have unhealthy items in them. It never fails, we go out to eat a chicken salad and they put imitation bacon bits and cheese on it but the menu doesn't say either of those was supposed to be in the salad. This is why we think the best way to eat salads is to make them yourself so you can add whatever you want that is healthy. Remember: eating only vegetables in main meal salads is not a way to lose weight because most often you will walk away unsatisfied.

Talk about food deprivation. No one wants to feel like they aren’t getting enough to eat; it’s no wonder we raid the fridge in the middle of the night, or overeat on the wrong foods when no one is around or looking; we’re hungry physically and emotionally!

How to Create a Salad You’ll Get Satisfied On

If you want to make salad the main meal, start out with the darkest greens you can find, spinach and kale both have excellent nutrition. Forget about the iceberg lettuce; its no good.

If it’s a vegetarian salad you’ll need to add some protein and some fat. Yes, I said fat. Avocados are good for the fat; now you can add some nuts and seeds of your choice or some cooked legumes such as garbanzo or kidney beans (at least a cup) for the protein.

And last but not least, add a pure dressing without sugars and chemicals; cold pressed olive oil and apple cider vinegar make a great dressing.

Now that’s the kind of salad makes a meal and it will satisfy your body’s nutritional needs. Eat to your heart’s content on these types of salads. Have a couple slices of whole wheat bread or toast with your salad.

If you have a meat or egg in your salad you’ll want to omit the whole grain however as this is where the weight gain would come in; Mixing certain types of foods together will actually fight in your stomach causing constipation, IBS issues and weight gain. We talk more about this extensively in our Better Health, Better Life Book.

Better Health, Better Life Book is not just about cleansing; it’s also about how to remain fit and healthy once you reach a healthy plateau in your life. It explains why eating certain foods together, in the same meal is one of the reasons why many people have intestinal issues, toxicity, and are overweight. We know how to keep the weight off and it’s all detailed in the book.

We practice all of the health strategies we talk about and we know that what we apply into our healthy lifestyle works! We want to share with you, dear readers, what we have applied and tested to be positive results for us and many others we know personally. If you have heartburn or acid reflux issues, we know why and the books explains how to stop having it.

We believe that to be healthy in mind and body, we shouldn’t deprive ourselves of food but rather eat to our hearts content and enjoy a better life!

Frank and Angie Lewis are natural health practitioners for over twenty-five years and have been engaged in the study of health for 4 decades. They have applied the natural health solutions in their book Better Health, Better Life to their own lives, drastically improving their health and living a better more energetic, fulfilled life.

We're an Expat Family of Five, Living Frugal, Healthy and Happy Abroad. We live in Cuenca, Ecuador and travel the Ecuador coast whenever we get a chance. We just adventured throughout the country of Panama for five weeks! Come along and enjoy some of our experiences with us!

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